


give it a minute

by glimmiks



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Asian Parenting (unhealthy), Character Study, Confessions, Friendship/Love, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Introspection, Light Angst, M/M, Pre-Relationship, akaashi fully living up to his mbti type, i promise im authorized to tag that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29983995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glimmiks/pseuds/glimmiks
Summary: Here's why he can't date Bokuto Koutarou long distance: Akaashi isn't good at starting things he's not sure he can finish. It's just not very practical.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28





	give it a minute

“I like you,” Bokuto says one day while they wait at the train stop after school. “I really like you, Akaashi.”

It’s just after rush hour; some of the team members stayed after classes to play a few sets even though the season is over. They’re standing at the far end of the station, out of earshot from the few commuters there with them. Akaashi stares down at the yellow chipped paint at his feet, drags the toe of his athletic shoe over it. Somehow, startling, predictably, he had known what Bokuto was going to say before he even said it.

“I know,” he says, not taking his eyes off the ground. He should say something else, but he doesn’t know how to start.

“You…” Bokuto clears his throat, shuffling nervously on his feet. Akaashi watches his shoes out of the corner of his vision. “You like me, too.” It’s not a question.

Akaashi nods, slowly. 

“Then what should we do about it?”

This is why he didn’t want to say anything to Bokuto about it. This is why it’s hard. “Nothing,” Akaashi says, and it’s an effort from every muscle in his body to keep his voice steady. “You’re graduating in a week, Bokuto-san. There’s nothing we _can_ do. I’m sorry.”

There’s a heavy silence that follows, overwhelming in the way it fills the spaces behind Akaashi’s ears and digs up something bitter in the back of his throat. He’s usually the one to keep Bokuto’s moods in check, say all the right things around him, but there’s nothing better he can say. This isn’t volleyball. This isn’t something Akaashi can control.

When the train comes into sight around the bend of the tracks, Bokuto pushes himself slowly off of the railing by his elbows and sighs, long and defeated.

“That’s okay,” he says, much to his surprise. His shoulders are drooping and he’s not meeting his eyes, but Bokuto still moves with purpose, picks up his school bag from the floor and starts forward. “I get it. I guess I just needed to hear you say it.”

* * *

What Akaashi doesn’t say is this: he’s not good at starting things he’s not sure he can finish. 

He can’t watch horror movies without knowing when all the jump scares happen, so he googles the play-by-play before he turns it on. He can’t write stories he doesn’t have endings planned for, so he writes the beginnings on the backs of his school notebooks and hopes that he forgets about them so he doesn’t keep feeling disappointed about it. And he can’t date Bokuto Koutarou long distance, even though he likes him, even though he wants to, even though he’s pretty sure he’s wanted to since the day they met, because at the root of it is the uncertainty. It’s just not very practical. So he puts it away and tries to stop thinking about it.

He can’t. He really tries, though.

* * *

They’ve put it out there in the open, so Akaashi expects things to be different. That’s what’s supposed to happen, when your best friend of two years suddenly isn’t just your best friend anymore, he’s something other and awkward and brimming with pointless apologies. And Bokuto’s never done anything less than wear his heart on his sleeve at all times, like the world’s brightest neon billboard that only displays words like _EXCITED_ or _EMBARRASSED_ or **_VERY VERY SAD_ **. Akaashi expects very, very sad. He knows how to deal with very, very sad.

He doesn’t know how to deal with…this. Bokuto buying him a canned coffee during lunch and apologizing for making things awkward, Bokuto asking Akaashi to toss to him after school like normal, Bokuto chattering about the same mundane things when they walk to the train station together, Bokuto acting like nothing has to change. 

It doesn’t, Akaashi thinks while Bokuto complains about his Japanese final exam as they wait for the train. It doesn’t have to change. They knew before anyone said it, didn’t they? It ached to be near him then, and it aches the same now.

“‘Kaashi? You listening?”

Akaashi says nothing. He leaves his heart where it flails in his throat, and gets on the train with Bokuto at his side.

* * *

“I have something for you,” Bokuto says a week later, and presses something small into Akaashi’s palm.

He blinks down at it. The button, dull rusted gold and still warm from Bokuto’s hand, is the same one on the school uniform that he’s wearing now. He fiddles with them when he’s anxious, Akaashi knows, so they’re always coming loose and Bokuto’s mother has to sew them back on with thread that’s a little too pale against the grey of their uniform jackets. When he turns it over, there’s a strand of white still caught through the loop.

 _Oh,_ Akaashi thinks. 

He suddenly feels something hot lodged in the back of his mouth as he tries to breathe, tries to form a response that’s not _I can’t_ or something equally as painful, or _fuck I like you so much it makes me look stupid_ or something equally as useless. “Bokuto-san—”

“Just keep it,” Bokuto says, pleads, closing his fingers around it with his own hands. Akaashi tries not to lean into their warmth. “I want you to have it.”

“I—”

“Please? I know you said you—I know we shouldn’t, and that’s okay, really, but I do like you and you like me and so you should have it. It doesn’t have to be like—like accepting a confession, it’s just…well, it just should be _yours—_ ”

“Okay,” Akaashi says, blinking quickly. He closes his fist all the way around it and shoves it into his pocket, so he doesn’t have to look at the button while also looking at Bokuto in his graduation gown. One thing at a time. “Okay. Thank you, Bokuto-san.”

For a second, he really considers it. The pocket of quiet space next to the library that they’ve found is mostly out of sight from the crowd gathered in the central courtyard, it’s the last few days of sakura season. Bokuto will be moving his things across the prefecture to his dormitory at Chuo in a few weeks, he has just given Akaashi his second button, and he looks so _happy_ that he took it, and this might be it. This might be the last time Akaashi will ever be able to take anything from Bokuto Koutarou, and for a second, he really thinks that he might want it. The one time might be worth it.

In the near distance, someone that sounds like Konoha calls Bokuto’s name. Akaashi takes a step backwards. It’s not, he thinks with some level of conviction, you can’t forget that it’s not.

“We should go back,” he says.

* * *

It’s not worth it, see, because Bokuto is going to play professional volleyball one day. Akaashi knows this like the beat of his own heart, like the intake of a breath, the same way he knows how Bokuto does not do anything halfway. If he wants the pros, he will pour every last drop of sweat into that bucket. If he dates Akaashi while wanting those same things, it’s sweat wasted.

And anyways, it’s not like Akaashi doesn’t have big aspirations of his own. His parents are expecting him to go pre-med at Todai or Tohoku or somewhere equally prestigious, take over his father’s practice at the very most, choose a profession that will make him the same amount of money at the very least. His third year will be spent studying for his college entrance exams and securing top marks in his STEM classes and captaining a volleyball team towards Nationals. He wouldn’t have time for a relationship anyways, long distance or not, future pro volleyball player or not. It’s not an idea worth entertaining.

(It’s also not worth it, Akaashi has to remind himself, because it’ll hurt so much worse afterwards. If he kisses Bokuto the one time, he won’t want it to be just the one time. And then what’s he supposed to do with himself after that?)

* * *

“So,” Konoha cuts straight to the chase after a muttered ‘itadakimasu’ and a smart snap of his chopsticks, “ _why_ aren’t you two dating again?”

Akaashi frowns into his ramen. This is not ‘bonding with my kouhai.’ This is an interrogation. “He’s going away. I’m staying here. It’s just not very practical.”

“You never know. It’s not like he’s leaving the prefecture.”

“Does it matter? Relationships take time and energy, and I doubt that either of us will have much of those next year.” 

Konoha studies him quietly, head tilted to the side. “You love him, though,” he says matter-of-factly, and Akaashi wonders bitterly when he became so transparent. “And he loves you. You know that, right?”

Akaashi looks pointedly down at his food. They fucked up his egg. It’s practically cooked all the way through and there’s no gooey bit the way he likes. 

Konoha sighs through his mouth, long and dramatic and what he’d probably call wisely, when he doesn’t receive a response. “I think you guys are so stupid,” he says, digging aggressively into his noodles. “We’ve all known it since, like, day one. You could’ve had two years together.”

 _Trust me,_ Akaashi wants to scream and ram his head into the side of the table, _I know._

“It’s better this way,” is what he says, and flips his egg over anyways.

* * *

Here’s why it is better, and why Konoha is wrong: Akaashi starts his third year of high school and promptly dies. 

The days seem to stretch impossibly longer than before, and yet there never seems to be enough time in the day for everything: volleyball and classes and friends and more volleyball and homework and exam prep and a college essay that isn’t writing itself. Akaashi doesn’t know how, but he somehow underestimated the work it would take to prepare an almost brand-new team for Inter-Highs in two months, and spends most of it feeling ridiculously out of his limit. His brain is nothing but plays and stats and the occasional physics theory that he obligingly shoves in with the rest until he’s oozing grey matter out of his ears. The soles of his volleyball shoes are falling out. His parents never seem to run out of questions about college applications.

Another reason why it’s better: there’s no commitment aspect to it and Akaashi now has a built-in excuse to call Bokuto whenever he wants, even though the captaining advice he offers is rarely ever sound, even though they usually end up not talking about volleyball at all. Akaashi just welcomes the change in topic and the familiar cadence, like welcoming the first rains in January, which he recognizes as extremely pathetic and extremely gay and just chooses not to look right at it. Usually he doesn’t even have to wrangle his nerves together long enough to press call first—Bokuto will beat him to it like it’s a six sense, and Akaashi will have to convince himself that it wasn’t for a reason, he’s just projecting.

Maybe he needs to start picking struggles. Compartmentalize. Between falling asleep at his desk with Bokuto on the other end on multiple school nights in a row and waking up with back pain, his failing personal essay, the first year wing spiker who takes tosses personally, spacing out during history lectures to wax poetics to the margins of his notebook about a person’s voice, weekly family dinners, and the growing pain between his eyes that feels like an oncoming migraine, he knows that something has to give. It simply isn’t practical like this.

During class, Bokuto texts him a picture of a dog he saw on the street. Akaashi drops his pen into the middle crease of his notebook and pretends to comprehend what’s being written on the blackboard. Raises his hand, answers a question, picks his pen back up.

See? Nothing practical about it.

* * *

“Akaashi-san?”

Akaashi opens his eyes very slowly. He’s still leaning against the back wall of the gym, holding the volleyball he picked up three minutes ago. The first years are folding up the net and Onaga has wheeled the almost-full cart over to him, a deep crease cut between his eyebrows.

“Did you just fall asleep?”

He blinks a little more rapidly, to stir some more feeling into his eyelids. “No. Here.” He places the ball on top of the stack and pats it twice. 

“Are you okay, Akaashi-san?”

Onaga likes his tosses a little higher and farther away from the net. He’s been showing good initiative at practice lately, his jumping reach looks like it might’ve gone up a couple centimeters from last year. Akaashi should compliment him, like a good captain would. He’s always forgetting things like that. 

“Akaashi-san?”

“Hm?”

“You should go home,” Onaga says, not unkindly. “The first years can finish cleaning up.”

“They can?” Akaashi frowns.

Onaga raises a single eyebrow. “I’m sure they can manage.”

Home sounds good. His bed is at home. His personal essay with revisions from his tutor is also at home. 

Akaashi pats the middle blocker’s shoulder, stifling a yawn. “Good play today. Two centimeters. Nice…nice jumps.”

Onaga sighs, caught between exasperated and amused. “See you tomorrow, Akaashi-san. Please get some sleep.”

* * *

Akaashi sleeps, and in those months, he dreams of things he already knows. Bowls of ramen and second buttons and a ball on all ten of his fingers. He dreams up hospital rooms, sterile and cold and he’s dressed in white, but when he examines the patient and picks up a scalpel, it’s like his body already knows what to do. Surgery successful. He dreams of jersey polyester and boy sweat and train stations and silence. When he reaches out, sometimes he feels like he can grab a hold of that feeling that fills the spaces in between. And he dreams of a boy, scuffling shoes against wood laminate before the jump, and then he’s rising. Rising with his chin jutted towards the sun, body bowed like an arch, rising like he’s caught a wind beneath wings no one can see, luminescent.

When the ball hits the ground in the opposite court, Akaashi can almost hear himself yell.

* * *

When the days begin to get warmer, volleyball hits a temporary sort of lull and Akaashi leaps at his chance to see a Chuo game. He chooses a weekend that his parents are out of town for one of his father’s conferences and pitches the trip under the guise of wanting to tour their lab facilities. He finishes all of his weekend homework on the Friday before and takes the train by himself across the prefecture, his heart back in his throat the entire way.

They’re good, of course. _Bokuto_ is good. He’s not on first string just yet but he gets subbed in halfway through the second set to give one of the outside hitters a break, and hits a terrifying cross shot that ricochets off the ground like it was shot out of a cannon. He gets lost with the rest of the crowd, but Akaashi screams along with them.

And then, after the match: _“Agaashiiiiiiii!”_

Akaashi gets the warning only a split second before a mass of solid muscle slams into his side and almost sends them to the ground. He smiles into jersey polyester. “Hello, Bokuto-san.”

“You came! I can’t believe you came to a game I got to play in!”

“Of course I came. You were very good.”

“Oh God, don’t tell him any more,” Kuroo groans, appearing behind them in his own Chuo jersey. “He’s got a big enough head about it as it is.” 

Bokuto pouts, bottom lip tucked between his teeth, one arm still hanging off of Akaashi’s shoulders. The expression is so familiar, it makes the corners of his mouth ache something fierce and he almost doesn’t hear Kuroo’s follow up, “How’s it going, Akaashi?”

“Oh, I’m good. And you, Kuroo-san?”

“Good, good.” Kuroo is very obviously only here for pleasantries. His eyes dart back and forth between them like the world’s best human metronome, grinning with all of his teeth. It’s post-game adrenaline, but it’s also very knowing, and it’s very Kuroo. Akaashi feels himself go warm.

Bokuto keeps talking, unaware. “Did you get here okay? You look kinda tired, ‘Kaashi, I told you you should be sleeping more. What do you want to do now? Do you want to get something to eat? I didn’t play much so I’m not very hungry but we can eat if you are! Or I can show you around campus? I think you’d really like it here, I can be a good tour guide!”

“I got here just fine. A tour sounds nice,” Akaashi nods. “I want to see your science buildings.” He won’t be paying attention or remember any of it, but his parents already said that they wanted pictures for their own inspection.

“The science buildings?” Bokuto draws his mouth into a line, confused, almost troubled. “I didn’t know you wanted to study science, ‘Kaashi.” But the look is gone almost as fast as it came, and he brightens with a new thought. “Oh, Kuroo! Kuroo’s in chemistry, he knows a lot about the buildings and stuff! Kuroo, you wanna—”

Kuroo backs away fast, shaking his head and waving his hands placatingly. “Sorry, study group. Wish I could. This was fun, though! Nice seeing you, Akaashi. Have him home by six. Make good choices!” And then he’s gone.

Bokuto frowns. “Weirdo.” Akaashi makes a hum of agreement. His face feels unnaturally hot.

“Well,” Bokuto smiles, suddenly small and genuine and _shy_ , “just you and me, then!”

 _You and me,_ Akaashi thinks dazedly. “Yeah.”

* * *

They walk, side by side, knuckles barely brushing but fully caught in the other’s orbit, and Akaashi commits all of it to memory—Bokuto dipped in sunset, Bokuto at ease, Bokuto with him, yet again. It feels like poetry.

* * *

Okay, secretly? 

Secretly, Akaashi doesn’t give a shit about the science buildings, because secretly, he doesn’t even want to go pre-med. He wants to study literature because he’s always loved to read, and even though he usually sticks to notebook poems that he never shows anyone and hasn’t finished a story in years, there’s something so incredibly cathartic and artful and beautiful about the pictures you can paint with words. He thinks he might be good at it one day, if he can get his shit together. Maybe publish something of his own.

But studying literature is impractical, because it doesn’t guarantee financial security. And to his parents, he’s already done impractical. He joined the volleyball club instead of the science olympiad team. He spent last summer volunteering at a sports camp for special ed kids with Komi and Sarukui instead of the hospital internship with one of his father’s college friends. And he chose to like boys, apparently, which wasn’t a deal breaker for them, but it was probably the most impractical thing he could’ve done at all. 

So the stories he wants to tell? And the poetry he wants to write about Bokuto Koutarou? And the way he wants to wake up next to him and watch him sleep in sunlight and make him eggs in the morning and uproot all of his carefully laid plans just to have a little bit more time with a boy that might grow too great for him to hold onto?

Akaashi can’t imagine his parents caring. He doesn’t know if he has any more room for impracticality with them left. He’s not sure if he wants to find out.

* * *

“But ‘Kaashi, you should tell them!” Bokuto advises brightly, far too energetic for a midnight phone call. “It’s what you really like. They can’t get mad at you for that.”

“No,” Akaashi agrees as he collects the scattered mess of physics notes spread across his bedsheets, cradling his phone between his shoulder and his cheek as he tidies. Studying any more tonight is looking like a fruitless effort. “They’ll just be even more disappointed in me.”

“But you’re good at it! And maybe you’re bad at surgery. How would they know if you’ve never done it?”

Akaashi flops forward into his pillow and smiles. What reasoning. “That’s true,” he indulges him. “But I honestly don’t think that I’m that much better at writing than I would be at surgery.”

“Are you kidding? I read your poem about the ducks at Ueno Park and falling off your bike! You’re really good, ‘Kaashi.”

Akaashi goes absolutely still. Grips his phone with both hands and presses it against his ear, scrambles upright on his bed, and squawks, _“What?”_

“Your duck poem! That you wrote in your math notebook on the back? I saw it when you let me borrow your notes when I didn’t get that trig unit last year. I was like—wow! ‘Kaashi has _bars_! I’m pretty sure there was a metaphor for something that I didn’t totally understand in there, but it still made me feel really light and happy, but also sort of sad—wait, what’s that word for when you think about old good memories again?”

“Nostalgic,” Akaashi supplies faintly. He wrote that one at training camp last year, next to his phone flashlight, sandwiched between his teammate’s futons while everyone was asleep. Bokuto read it. Bokuto read it and he liked it.

“Yeah, nostalgic! So when you told me you wanted to do science and be a cardiothorac-kick surgeon—did I say that right? Cardiothora _cic_?—when you told me you wanted to do that instead, I just…didn’t really get it.”

Akaashi puts the phone on speaker and flops sideways onto his back, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his palms. “I can’t—” The confession gets caught in his throat, raw and burning, humiliating. Bokuto’s hum of encouragement peters out into static. “I can’t finish writing anything,” he finally says. “When I try, I just—I can’t.”

“That poem wasn’t finished?”

“No,” Akaashi almost laughs, “not poems. Poems are easy. Just streams of consciousness. I mean real, long stories, with beginnings and middles and endings. I can’t write those.”

“Oh.” There’s a pause, and then faint rustling like he’s shifting under his covers. “So?”

“So,” Akaashi almost laughs again, but it falls flat and damp, “why would I study something that I can’t even do properly? It’s not practical.”

For some reason, Bokuto actually laughs. “You really care about what’s practical and what’s not, huh?”

Akaashi frowns. “Well. Of course.”

“Even if it’s not what makes you happy?”

He frowns harder. “I don’t—cardiothoracic surgery could make me happy.” The paychecks would certainly make him happy.

“Yeah, but—well, okay. It’s like me and volleyball and all this college stuff, right?” Bokuto says. “I might not make the pro leagues. That’s never a sure thing. It’s why my mom wanted me to get a degree too, like a safety net. She’s really worried about all the time I spend practicing instead of studying, and sometimes I don’t think she gets why I’m playing if I’m not even on first string yet and there’s a chance that I don’t ever make it pro. But—I can’t _not_ play, y’know? I don’t know what I’d do without it. Even if it’s not practical, or it doesn’t end up happening, I just have to try.”

Akaashi blinks slowly at the ceiling. He doesn’t know what to say.

“Er—sorry, I dunno if that made any sense. My point is,” Bokuto continues hurriedly, “you like this stuff, ‘Kaashi. I think you like it as much as I like volleyball. You definitely like it more than cardiothorac-kick surgery.”

“And if it makes people feel good, and it makes _you_ feel good, then…well, what’s the point of practical anyway?”

* * *

The point of practical was always this: Akaashi never made decisions any other way. Every activity pursued, every friendship made, every argument picked, were all products of a very methodical mindset: do I benefit from this? How does it hurt me? How much do I care? 

Even volleyball had been a practical decision, though his parents hadn’t seen it the same way. Fukurodani had gone to Nationals the year before and made it to the quarterfinals with their star ace, and with his grades in top shape already, Akaashi saw the continuation of sports as a good way to round out his college resume. And yes, he liked it. But he’d also reasoned for it.

So Akaashi doesn’t like making decisions just because he _feels_ one way or another. It makes him nervous, and a lot of the time, making decisions like that just doesn’t make much sense to him. It’d be like dropping a glass on the floor just because you were in the mood to see something break. Now you’re breaking out the broom and there’s glass in your hands.

But maybe he’s changed more than he thought, or he’s finally growing a heart, or something, because now when Akaashi thinks about hospital rooms and wearing white and being called doctor, he doesn’t feel anything. 

It just bothers him, and he can’t give a good reason why.

* * *

_Hey, Bokuto-san?_

_You talk like you know a lot about chasing after what you want. Like how you chased after volleyball._

_So that day at the train station, when you told me you wanted me, and I said no. Why didn’t you chase what you wanted then?_

_Did you not want me enough? Or_

_Or did you know that, maybe, eventually, I would’ve let you catch up?_

* * *

When Akaashi dreams, he sees a boy made of starlight, laughter on his lips, bare feet planted in the wildgrass, and then he’s rising. He’s made of starlight and silver dust and rises towards the sky with a destination in mind, a world stage or a kingdom on the moon. From the ground, a peasant boy watches him go, flowers in his hair, a button in his pocket, and wishes for his turn to visit the stars. He’s not sure what their ending is, but he knows that they get one.

Akaashi picks up his pen and begins to write.

* * *

_“Will you tell me what they’re like? The stars?”_

_“I won’t have to, silly. You’ll see them yourself.”_

_“I’m not sure. My parents…”_

_“Should want you to have what you want. It’s not their journey up, is it?”_

_“I suppose not.”_

_“So you’ll come up?”_

_“I think so.”_

_“Really? And you’ll come say hello?”_

_“Of course. You’ll be on my way.”_

* * *

“Bokuto-san.” 

He’s sending this voicemail when he knows that Bokuto will be in practice for another hour, enough time for him to get home and stew around in his own nervousness and maybe actually start changing his application forms. Akaashi clears his throat, and only then does he realize how dry his throat has gone. “I just wanted to tell you, you were right. About the cardiothoracic surgery, and about everything. I think I’m going to change my study to literature, and I think I’m telling my parents tonight. Hopefully they aren’t too disappointed in me, but I think now I know that I’d rather lose my inheritance than have to look at bloody lungs and hearts for the rest of my life. So… thank you.”

Across the street in a convenience store, Onaga and another second year from the volleyball club wave at him through the window. He waves back. “My first choice is still Todai, but I’m keeping my options open. Maybe Tohoku. My guidance counselor likes my chances there. As long as I shoot for the top, I think my parents won’t mind as much. I’ll be happy anywhere with a good literature program. Maybe getting out of the prefecture might even be a good thing.”

He clenches the phone tighter in his fist. “I…I don’t know if you still feel the same way about me. Well—I think I know, but I don’t want to assume. But I—I still feel that way about you. And I’m going to apply to Chuo. Maybe I’ll get in, maybe I won’t. I’m going to try not to let it bias any decisions. But I think that…no matter where I end up, I want you with me. So if the offer is still standing, I’m accepting your confession from last spring. No matter what happens.” 

Deep breath. Whether he knows the ending or not, this is something Akaashi knows he can finish. “I don't want to be practical. I want to be happy, and you make me happy.

“I love you, Koutarou. And I hope you’ll have me.”

**Author's Note:**

> akaashi just means so much to me. what a boy.
> 
> im on [tumblr](https://glimmiks.tumblr.com/) and literally as of last night, [twitter](https://twitter.com/glimmiks), so please come say hi!


End file.
